An image enhancement technique combining sharpening and noise reduction

A new approach to contrast enhancement of image data is presented. The proposed method is based on a multiple-output system that adopts fuzzy models in order to prevent the noise increase during the sharpening of the image details. Key features of the proposed technique are better performance than available methods in the enhancement of images corrupted by Gaussian noise and no complicated tuning of fuzzy set parameters. In fact, the overall nonlinear behavior of the enhancement system is very easily controlled by one parameter only.